tips for testing new versions in isolation


apandey

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I am planning to get familiar with plugin development

With 6.12 coming up, and some plugins still not working, I am thinking of picking an abandoned plugin and try to fix it

 

I have read some material in this forum, but what I am unsure of is how to best build a test sandbox during development. Keen to see how others develop

 

I mostly develop on my macbook, but can also do so in a linux env if needed. I only have one unraid server, and I am reluctant to try 6.12 with it yet as I run my main workloads there. I have other desktop, laptop and mini PCs, but none of those have hardware like HBA etc. In most cases, I am probably not looking at specific hardware, so I am not sure it matters, but would be good to know of any approach to mock / virtualize hardware if needed.

 

So what is the best way to try unraid 6.12 and develop plugins for it without disrupting my current install?

 

Also, how can I do this regularly from licensing perspective? If I create a trial USB, it will eventually expire, and then that USB is blocked. How do developers use unraid? Is there a development build or some other approach?

 

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Personally, I do all development on my main rig which does always run the latest RCs and betas.  At times however I would instead use a crappy old laptop I've got hanging around using it's hdd as a data drive and nothing else.

 

You can also virtualize unraid as a VM running within unraid.  Check out this video 

 

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10 hours ago, apandey said:

So what is the best way to try unraid 6.12 and develop plugins for it without disrupting my current install?

I do most of my development in a VM.  Whether this is appropriate for you will depend on what you are trying to develop and whether you need direct access to hardware,  as well as the video mentioned earlier running Unraid in a VM is covered here in the online documentation accessible via the ‘Manual’ link at the bottom of the GUI or the DOCS link at the top of each forum page.

 

10 hours ago, apandey said:

Also, how can I do this regularly from licensing perspective? If I create a trial USB, it will eventually expire, and then that USB is blocked. How do developers use unraid? Is there a development build or some other approach?

Whatever approach you take you need a second licence if you want to do development on s different system or in a VM.   There is (unfortunately) no developers licence.   As you said using a trial licence is not ideal as when it expires the flash drive would be blacklisted for further trials.    You therefore need to either purchase a second licence, or if you think what you are doing would be of sufficient interest and/or value you could try approaching Limetech to see if they might provide a complementary licence.

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12 hours ago, apandey said:

I am planning to get familiar with plugin development

With 6.12 coming up, and some plugins still not working, I am thinking of picking an abandoned plugin and try to fix it

 

I have read some material in this forum, but what I am unsure of is how to best build a test sandbox during development. Keen to see how others develop

 

I mostly develop on my macbook, but can also do so in a linux env if needed. I only have one unraid server, and I am reluctant to try 6.12 with it yet as I run my main workloads there. I have other desktop, laptop and mini PCs, but none of those have hardware like HBA etc. In most cases, I am probably not looking at specific hardware, so I am not sure it matters, but would be good to know of any approach to mock / virtualize hardware if needed.

 

So what is the best way to try unraid 6.12 and develop plugins for it without disrupting my current install?

 

Also, how can I do this regularly from licensing perspective? If I create a trial USB, it will eventually expire, and then that USB is blocked. How do developers use unraid? Is there a development build or some other approach?

 

I have a few servers but do use main server to test my plugins are backwards compatible. But one of them I have as a VM on another test server. using a USB to mSata adapter, very quick at rebooting/downgrading. I have purchased my own licenses.

 

Which plugin(s) are you looking at picking up. Happy to help you along the way if you need some support. 

Edited by SimonF
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thanks @Squid, @itimpi, @SimonF - those pointers helped

 

specifically, I was looking to take a stab at corsairpsu plugin since the current maintainer isn't free to update it for 6.12, but the real deal is that I wanted to learn something and get familiar with the system in general. This looked like a good opportunity

 

For now, I just ran it on a NUC with a trial USB. For occasional dev effort (which is probably all I have time for right now), I guess trial would work, 12 USB a year isn't too expensive if all I am doing is booting occasionally for throwaway environments. If I get more serious, I can get a dedicated license later. 

 

The bigger issue is mimicking the hardware. In this case, I mocked the corsair API output to test, so I think it will depend on what I want

 

I have something to show for this weekends attempt here, hope its useful: 

 

 

 

 

 

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